Just a quick one as a) I don’t have much information for you as yet and b) I managed to hit my head on my own desk really hard> earlier and need a lie down, but I thought perhaps some of you would be interested to hear news on The Fullbright Company, aka what the lead designer of the excellent Minerva’s Den add-on for BioShock 2 did next.

After working on assorted BioShocks at 2K Marin and then Irrational, Steve ‘Fullbright’ Gaynor got back together with fellow ex-Marin types and Minerva collaborators Johnnemann Nordhagen and Karla Zimonja, and they’ve set up this new indie studio based out of Portland, Oregon. “We missed working on a small team, on a small project, focused on telling a personal story in a player-driven way. We wanted to do that again. It was fun last time.” (more…)

Those of us who didn’t spend the best part of a week legging it around a giant convention centre earlier this month could only swoon at the resulting tall tales of BioShock: Infinite’s newly-announced reality-rift feature, known as Tears. Now we get our own crack in space-time to peer through, as Ken Levine talks about (and demonstrates) companion character Elizabeth’s ability to introduce elements from other realities into the player’s game-world.

The upcoming third BioShock game intends to fix an oft-made criticism of the Rapture-set original games, according to Timothy Gerritsen, Director of Development at Irrational Games.

The Executive Producer on Bioshock Infinite admitted to RPS in an interview published today that, in the first Bioshock, “we failed in giving you a sense of that city underwater.”
(more…)

Well, obviously pretty much everyone’s fighting you> – it is a first-person shooter, after all. But there’s also inter-factional conflict in 2012′s Skyoshock, as one Mr K. Levine reveals below. What on earth could make the denizens of a rebel, militaristic, ultranationalist city in the sky turn against each other? Oh, riiiiiight. Also: time travel.
(more…)

Only a shortie for Ken & chums’ latest, but it’s pretty confident proof that we’re not in Rapture anymore, Andrew. Rocket-spewing zeppelins, anti-gravity powers, gruesome splatting via sky-crates and, at the end, a hint of how large the environments may be. Also, it really plays up the fact that this is a buddy game – but not exactly a buddy comedy. (more…)

The 2K way of late appears to be announcing impossibly ambitious and exciting-sounding games then going deathly silent for months (with the notable exception of Duke Nukem Forever, which has been very, very noisy since its comeback announcement). So it’s grand to see BioShock: Infinite start its promotional gears turning again, ahead of what will hopefully be a grand old infosplosion at E3. Following a revamp of the game’s website, we’ve got four new screenshots to stare at and make desperate, fannish guesses about. Hope you don’t like horses, because I’m about to show you a picture of a dead one.
(more…)

Good news, everyone. I’d given up absolutely all hope of this ever happening, and yet it has. The final DLC for Bioshock 2, Minerva’s Den, was a smart vignette full of nods to System Shock and the history of computing, not to mention being a welcome opportunity to approach the fascinating, doomed society of Rapture from a perspective other than its increasingly fantastical main narrative. This standalone tale of a calculating rogue AI seemed tailor-made for PC gamers… only PC gamers never got it. So it’s with fairly delighted surprise that we discover it’s finally, finally due out on PC almost a year after its console version.
(more…)

The BioShock 2 Protector Trials DLC arrives on PC today, adding a new challenge mode and six arenas to 2K’s inarguably moist epic. A mere seven and a half months late, too! That said, we’re getting it for free, and having had a read of Christian Donlan’s Eurogamer review this sounds to me like neat enough stuff. Take a look at some in-game footage below, if you’re curious. Thx Blues for the tip-off.
(more…)

We were told the PC would indeed be treated to Bioshock 2 The Protector Trials (whatevs multiplayer stuff) and Minerva’s Den (a really rather good standalone new singleplayer chunk), despite initial plans to axe it. WE WERE TOLD IT.

Then it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen for so long that 2010 became 2011. So we gave up. I know I did, anyway.

Now, four months later, we’re told it’s still happening. Well, okay then. Hell, sounds like we might even get that patch we were promised 20 years ago or whatever it was. (more…)

Previously canned DLCs for Bioshock 2 will be arrive on PC after all. That’s what “2K Elizabeth” has said over here. The post reads: “I have some good news concerning the BioShock 2 PC patch as well as the development of Protector Trials and Minerva’s Den for the PC. Not to keep you in suspense any longer, I’ll sum it up with one sentence: We have resumed development on all three and they will be coming to PC.”

It also looks like the patch and the Protector Trials will be due roughly December time and they will be free. This is: Good News.